‘You want a lecture on biochemistry?’ he asks, placing the shell back on the table. ‘They didn’t work. I’m not sure what else you need to know. At that stage none of the costs were recoverable.’

‘What sort of costs?’

‘Millions. Forty, fifty. Does it really matter? Marianne’s dead, and I don’t know why you’re here asking me questions about something so far in the past.’

He suddenly looks even paler than before, as if all this talk is painful. Which, of course, it is.

‘I know it seems odd,’ Vermeer says, ‘but we are doing everything we can, and we could really use your help in answering just a few more questions.’

He doesn’t take his eyes off the shell, but he finally nods.

‘The offices Marianne rented were broken into. Can you think of why that might be?’

‘When?’

‘Most likely last night; it was discovered this morning.’

‘I … no. Not anyone specifically.’

‘What about in general? Would your company be interested in the research she was doing? From what I hear it could be the start of a medical revolution.’

‘Not without Marianne it won’t. But anyway, no pharmaceutical company is going to raid their offices – that’s just crazy.’

Patrick Wust seemed to think otherwise.

I show him the same photo of Huisman I’d shown Wust.

He hesitates for a moment before shaking his head.

‘I don’t recognize him. Is he the one you think killed her?’

‘Just someone we want to talk to,’ Vermeer says.

‘Did you have any dealings with Koen Muller?’ I ask him, changing tack. ‘He was on the board of DH Biotech around about that time the trial failed.’

Do I imagine it, or does something in his posture stiffen at that name? I’m just about to push for an answer when he leans forward and vomits onto the glass table in front of him, hitting both the books and the shell. Vomit runs across the table surface, and then over the edge.

‘You see his reaction before he threw up?’

‘He’s lying,’ I say as we walk back to the car.

‘It could have been because he suddenly felt bad, but … I’m inclined to agree. Pretty sure he knows Koen Muller.’

‘When I spoke to Wust he said that Marianne’s discovery could obliterate more traditional forms of treatment. And her own father works for a company that could be seen as a competitor.’

‘What are you saying?’

I shake my head. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘So where does that leave us?’

A question to which I haven’t got an answer. I glance out over the water. The sun’s setting, fattening up as it slides towards the horizon. The silhouette of a bird streaks across it.

I haven’t got an answer.

But I am going to get one.

There’s a Man With a Gun